


a dream i cannot hear

by Indipindy16



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Apocalypse, Buckle up, Deaf Character, Gen, Sign Language, there's no happy ending here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indipindy16/pseuds/Indipindy16
Summary: Reginald Hargreeves found a solution to Vanya’s powers that was much more efficient and much more permanent. Until it wasn’t.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 17
Kudos: 185





	a dream i cannot hear

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a quote by Beethoven, probably the most famous deaf musician: “Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

When Vanya was 7, she woke up in the infirmary to find out that she was deaf. Her father told her (he had to write it on a piece of paper in that pretentious cursive of his, so she took several minutes to read it through the blur of tears) that someone had burst into the Academy when the rest were on a mission and she’d been hit so badly in the head by the burglars that she could’ve died. 

She was lucky that Pogo had got to her in time, you see. Lucky that all she’d lost was her hearing. Of course. She didn’t remember any of it, but apparently that was common after trauma.

When Reginald had left, immediately her siblings had tumbled into the room. Five was the first to get to her. He was saying something but she couldn’t hear it, not anymore, she’d never hear his voice again telling her _it’s alright, I’m here, don’t listen to Dad_ because she was - 

He couldn’t blame her when she burst into tears. He actually did something that even back then had been really shocking and rare - he hugged her. Before she knew it, Klaus had joined in, and then Ben, and eventually it descended into a giant group hug. Grace had to chase them all out of the infirmary so Vanya could get some rest to recover. 

She’d spent that whole night staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. She was too scared to close her eyes. They were all she had left.

When she returned to her bedroom she burst out crying at the sight of her violin. Pogo had entered the room, having heard the crying, and gave her a pat on the back as if trying to comfort her. He took the violin away. She never saw it again.

After that, she had to learn sign language. She got a whiteboard to communicate with, and Grace got reprogrammed with a patch that made her sign along with anything she said if Vanya was in the room. 

They only had one unscheduled half hour, and all of hers were spent teaching the others sign language too. The first few weeks, they would all be together for that half hour, and for once in her life Vanya finally had her siblings’ undivided attention. But it wasn’t long until Allison, Diego and Luther started coming less and less often then not at all, Ben had books to read and Klaus had managed to sneak in a loud speaker to listen to his own music. 

Finally, it was just her and Five. He didn’t really need to learn much more at that point. He’d mastered it. He mastered anything he put his mind to, and his next big idea: time travel. There wasn’t a word in sign language for time travel, or for teleport, so she and Five came up with their own little portmanteaus for them. One of Five’s jumps was ‘jump’ and ‘electricity.’ Time travel was ‘clock’ along with one of Five’s jumps, so it would be ‘ _clock, jump, electricity’_. 

Because they didn’t need words, nobody would hear them and catch them awake at night. Reginald stopped monitoring them in their sleep after the age of 10, when Five started jumping into Vanya’s room after their curfew so they could chat longer.

They would talk about everything - literally everything, because Five was trying to explain to her his theory of the universe. He would use her little whiteboard to scribble down equations, and would have to explain what each letter represented and how they worked and what it all meant. Vanya didn’t really understand why it all mattered. Everyone else was living just fine and they didn’t know any of it.

_“But not everyone is going to time travel,”_ Five signed to her when she asked him about it, one of his signature smug grins spreading across his face.

Every night, Five would tell her his plans for time travel. He said he would take all of the Umbrella Academy, even Vanya, and they’d explore history together. They’d go and meet the Ancient Greeks, they’d be pirates, they’d hang out with the Victorians, they'd fight in the American Revolution. And when they've run out of history to explore, they'd go to the future. They would have hoverboards and flying cars, just like he'd read in a sci-fi novel(one he'd originally snuck in as a present for Ben but which had been rejected, because Ben only liked fantasy novels).

“ _All of us? Even One and Three?”_ Vanya asked. 

She didn’t mean to use numbers, and if Luther and Allison had ever stuck around for the sign language lessons where they learnt how to make their own signs for people’s names she’d have made them ones, but it was just so much easier to sign their numbers.

Five considered it. Neither of them were particularly fond of Luther and Allison, who spent their days only talking to each other and mocking the others, especially Diego’s stutter, Klaus’s drug and alcohol habits and Vanya’s deafness. 

_“Alright. All of us except One and Three,”_ he’d agreed.

For the next couple years, Five became more and more obsessed with time travel. He wanted to try it, and Vanya knew that the next time their father denied him Five would just go and do it anyway. 

He never got the chance.

The summer before their thirteenth birthday, Reginald Hargreeves decided that the Umbrella Academy should have a kind of ‘summer camp.’ They would all be going, except Grace and Pogo, who would stay home. And except, of course, Vanya. She wasn’t in the Umbrella Academy. Her father made sure she never forgot that.

The day they left, her father gave her specific instructions to stay within the limits of her room, the kitchen, the library and the living room. She was not to go outside. She was not to go anywhere near his study or his side of the house. Reginald had wanted to avoid the children as much as possible outside of training, you see, so he kept his side of the house fully separate. 

Five gave her one last backwards glance before he got into the minibus Reginald had arranged to drive them to their destination. Vanya gave him a weak little smile. He signed to her very quickly, _“See you soon, Vanya,”_ using the portmanteau he’d made for her. ‘Strong’ and ‘extraordinary’. His own little middle finger to their father, you see. Vanya loved it.

Vanya found her father’s journal that night.

She’d been talking to Grace, who gave her the robotic pre-prepared spiel as usual: _“Reginald Hargreeves is a great man. He…”_ Vanya was just so tired of it. She ran away before Grace could finish, leaving her dinner to go cold uneaten at the kitchen table. She didn’t want to eat alone. 

She’d just been walking and walking, not willing to go to her room and not wanting to face Pogo or Grace yet, when she’d found herself standing in front of her father’s study. 

The door was closed. It was always closed. He had never, in her entire life, let her enter the room, only ever addressing them while they stood in the doorway, nervously bouncing from one foot to the next and wishing he would just let them get back to whatever studying or training they’d been doing. That was the one good thing about being deaf - she couldn’t hear him ranting at them any more, and Reginald Hargreeves would not deign to do something so mundane as to learn sign language in order to communicate to his daughter. 

So Vanya would just stand there, holding hands with Five and Klaus (he always wanted to hold someone’s hand, just to check they weren’t a ghost, and Vanya was the only one of his siblings who would let him do it) and wonder what it would be like to one day, just once, walk over the threshold into that room.

How could she miss such an opportunity as this?

There was a little part of her that knew it was a bad idea, but she was too angry to pay attention to it.

Vanya Hargreeves entered the study. Vanya Hargreeves saw the book on the desk. Vanya Hargreeves opened the book. Vanya Hargreeves read the words on the page. Vanya Hargreeves caused the apocalypse.

_Number Seven’s powers are activated by emotion. In order to prevent her being a threat, measures much be taken._

She remembered dropping the book.

_The medication seems not to be effective. Number Seven broke a vase while playing violin. She is so far unaware that this was a consequence of her actions._

She remembered running to Klaus’s room.

_The procedure to cause deafness has been carried out. She has accepted the story of a burglary. No incidents thus far._

She remembered turning his speakers up to full volume and pressing her ear to it to feel, rattling right down to her bones, the music.

_I have reason to believe that her powers could still be accessed through vibrations, however no incidents thus far._

She remembered seeing Pogo rush into the room, but it was too late. Her eyes were white and wild and for the first time in her life, she felt really, truly, angry.

_Number Seven is no longer a threat._

and

the

whole

world

fell 

apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated!


End file.
